Weighing the Promise of Healthcare and Finding it Wanting

Speaking on ABC's "This Week", House Speaker Nancy Pelosi commented, "I think everybody wants affordable health care for all Americans. They know that this will take courage. It took courage to pass Social Security. It took courage to pass Medicare. And many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill."

There is that word again. What exactly does affordable mean? The left tosses the word about but never bothers to define exactly what they mean by affordable. It could mean anything and everything and no doubt it will. Affordable is a political term that is unassociated with actual costs, only addresses price and means, "you pay according to the amount of political capital you have." For instance if you belong to the SEIU you pay less than if you didn't. But I digress.

I dare say that the only reason it takes courage to pass Obamacare is because a majority of Americans oppose it. According to a recent CNN poll only 25% of Americans want congress to pass this Healthcare bill. It is particularly telling that the new left continues to depict the 75% of Americans that oppose their efforts to nationalize healthcare (which is the end game) as ignoble, uncompassionate, ignorant racists. More annoying is that they portray themselves as visionary, compassionate champions of good.

I suspect that the truth is that Americans do not like the substance of the healthcare bills - all 4000 pages! Nor are they enamored of the back room deals this administration cut in order to secure the votes of their own party. Frankly, the stench of bribes like the latest appellate-judgeship-for-yes vote is more reminiscent of B.S. than it is of hope and change.

It is also likely true that Americans have weighed the fiscal promises of huge government programs like Social Security against their reality and decided they would like to find other avenues towards reforming healthcare- other than putting it in charge of Washington bureaucrats.